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Adobe Releases 2015 Photo, Video Updates

15 June 2015

Late tonight, Adobe updated core applications in its photography and video suites. We attended recent briefings on the Creative Cloud 2015 releases and will summarize the new features below with reviews to follow during the week.

Earlier today the company quietly released its new Android apps in the Play store. Those include Photoshop Mix, Color CC, Brush CC and Shape CC. At the same time the company's iOS apps, including the new Hue CC and updates to other Adobe iOS apps, were released.

On the photography front, Adobe announced a number of updates to Photoshop and Lightroom. The program includes Lightroom CC desktop/mobile/Web, Photoshop CC, Photoshop Mix, Slate, Voice and How-tos for all skill levels for $9.99 a month.

In addition to those core applications for the Creative Cloud Photography Program, the company also introduced Adobe Stock, a new stock photography service.

Creative Cloud Senior Marketing Director Jim Mohan said Adobe Stock is the result of the company's acquisition of Fotolia. Adobe's research showed that both buyers and sellers of stock photography use Adobe tools, so it made sense to move into stock.

But the company wants to "raise the bar on stock content," Mohan said, extending the service into its apps and providing quality content.

Stephen Neilson described two main themes for the Photoshop improvements. One is a focus on editing features and the other on design features.

The editing improvements include:

Real-time Healing Brush and Patch. There's no delay in seeing the effects of your brush stroke. It now happens in real time.

Inherited Lightroom improvements. The new Dehaze filter, in effect.

Move and extend objects with more control. You can now rotate and scale selected objects before you drop them.

The design improvements include:

Linked Assets. Edit a linked asset once and it will be updated everywhere it has been used. And by "everywhere," Adobe means everywhere, even your design team's files.

Multiple Artboards. You can display several pieces (a business card, a poster, a brochure) at once.

Among the smaller but helpful improvements to Photoshop is a new Noise panel for blur filters to standardize noise over the image. The same noise that appears in the unblurred, original areas of the image can be applied to the areas blurred by the filter.

Photoshop Mix, the tablet and smartphone app, has been released in an Android version, improves roundtripping for Mix creations to Lightroom and adds the iPad's Reduce Blur feature to the iPhone.

If the photography updates seem a little underwhelming, the video updates will keep you up at night. There are two big stars among the new applications.

Hue

The first big star is Hue CC, a new tablet and smartphone app, because it epitomizes the company's focus on "getting the job done," as Patrick Palmer put it.

That used to mean providing sophisticated tools for knowledgeable craftspeople to deploy for ever more sophisticated effects. But recently Adobe has invited to less skilled people (like mere editors) to the table. And Hue is a good example.

Hue. Same rosy library but different midtones.

Inspired by the quality of light early in the morning over the Pacific Ocean? Pull our your smartphone, launch Hue and capture it.

A 3D histogram appears representing the volume of each hue in the size of a bubble. The bubbles rotate around so you can pick one for the midtone. You can apply the look to either of two standard images and vary the intensity with which it is applied.

Once you've got something you like, you can name it and save it as a color library you can apply to any clip.

It's an ingenious representation of lighting rather than a particular hue. And you can interact with it, shifting the midtone by picking a different bubble.

Without really knowing anything, you're able to apply a look you've come across to a scene in your video.

We created two. A rosy one (pictured above) based on an iPhone photo of a rose and a cool one based on the jeans we happened to be wearing at the moment inspiration struck. Great fun.

Al Mooney walked us through a number of enhancements in Premiere Pro and Premiere Clip, the mobile version.

You can, for example, seamlessly open a Clip video you captured on your phone in Premiere on the desktop. Getting from mobile to the desktop is the trick, he pointed out.

He also pointed out some small user face improvements like hamburger menus replacing fly-out menus and a Lightroom-inspired workspace mode bar at the top.

But there are also more GPU-optimized features like real-time scopes.

The big new feature is Morph cuts, which can smooth transitions where the background stays the same and a speaker jostles their head from one clip to the next. You do have to lock the camera to avoid background movement.

There's also a Time Tuner that can tailor the video content to a target duration without any noticeable loss in quality (up to about 10 percent either longer or shorter).

And there's a dynamic link now between Audition and Premiere Pro, which means updates to a clip are instant.

You can now apply a look during playback in After Effects. Libraries have been expanded to include sharing Photoshop layers, colors, etc. And there's now a contextual menu item to share an asset.

Face Tracker is also available in After Effects now.

You can change the interface's brightness easily now with an appearance preference. And you can target After Effects tabs with a finger or a stylus now, a small change that makes using the program a lot less frustrating.

at http://adobe.ly/dpsnextgen. Content from Creative Cloud for enterprise also syncs with Adobe Experience Manager, a key component of Adobe Marketing cloud, to accelerate marketing campaigns by streamlining creative-to-marketing workflows.

Pricing and Availability

Today's updates to CC desktop and mobile apps are immediately available for download by Creative Cloud members as part of their membership at no additional cost. Membership plans are available for individuals, students, teams, educational institutions, government agencies and enterprises. When adding Adobe Stock to any paid yearly Creative Cloud membership plan, creatives can save up to 40 percent over purchasing stock content separately. For pricing details, visit: https://creative.adobe.com/plans. An innovative web experience for customers showcases the new features and capabilities launched today, at http://makeit.adobe.com.

Adobe Stock Launches Worldwide

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Adobe has launched Adobe Stock, the industry's first stock content service to be integrated directly into the content creation process and the tools creatives use every day. Available through Adobe Creative Cloud, this new service radically simplifies buying and using stock content, including photos, illustrations and graphics.

"Adobe Stock extends Creative Cloud's value as a vibrant global marketplace," said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media, Adobe. "Eighty-five percent of customers who purchase stock images use Adobe creative tools. The deep integration with our latest Creative Cloud desktop apps, including Photoshop and InDesign, makes buying and using stock photos incredibly easy. At the same time, our customers -- the best photographers and designers on the planet -- will have the opportunity to contribute millions of new photos and images to Adobe Stock. This is really going to raise the bar in the world of stock content."

Adobe Stock, a curated collection of 40 million-and-growing high-quality images, is deeply integrated into the latest releases of Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC. Designers can launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software, add watermarked images to their Creative Cloud Libraries and then access and work with images across multiple desktop tools. When creatives are ready to license the image for finished work, they can do it directly within the desktop software they are working in. Thanks to Creative Cloud's signature CreativeSync technology, all edits made on a watermarked image are automatically applied to the newly licensed image, saving hours of potential rework.

Adobe Stock is also available as a standalone stock service, http://stock.adobe.com, where designers and marketers, who are not yet Creative Cloud members, can download, purchase and sell stock images.

The launch of Adobe Stock shakes up the $3 billion global stock image market, as Adobe customers are active contributors to stock image services and regular purchasers of stock content. An estimated 85 percent of creatives who buy stock content use Adobe tools; and more than 90 percent of stock content sellers use Adobe software in the preparation of their photos and images. Adobe Stock is based on the acquisition of stock content provider Fotolia, earlier this year.

In addition to utilizing the Adobe Stock service, creatives can contribute work to Adobe Stock, accessing a worldwide community of motivated stock content buyers. Adobe also announced it will offer industry-leading rates to photographers and designers contributing content to Adobe Stock.

Key features of Adobe Stock include:

Easily manage, work with and purchase stock content. Designers can launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software, add watermarked images to Creative Cloud Libraries and then access and work with images across multiple desktop and mobile tools. When creatives are ready to license the image for finished work, they can do it directly within the CC desktop software application. Designers can also edit a watermarked image in an application like Photoshop CC and, when licensed, these edits are automatically applied to the purchased full-resolution image.

High-impact creative content for print, Web or mobile app projects. Adobe Stock is an extensive marketplace of over 40 million photos, illustrations and graphics, covering virtually every subject. Whether it's finding a standout image of a Scottish castle for a tourist brochure; a beach volleyball game for a sports Web site; or an illustration of a restaurant menu for a mobile app, Adobe Stock has a huge selection of possibilities. Adobe also plans to add new stock content categories in the coming months, leveraging Adobe customers' unrivalled reach and experience across creative fields.

Simple and flexible pricing plans. Flexible purchase options enable creatives and marketers to buy single images, as they need them or purchase a monthly plan. Saving up to 40 percent, Creative Cloud members get the best value when they add an Adobe Stock annual plan option to their Creative Cloud membership. A first for the stock image industry, creatives who sign up for a 10-images-per-month plan can "rollover" unused images for up to a year (most month-to- month stock subscription plans require creatives to use all images each month or lose them). For customers who are not Creative Cloud members, a standalone Adobe Stock service offers single-image pricing, as well as month-to-month and annual membership plans.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Stock is available today in 36 countries and 13 languages. Pricing for Creative Cloud individual and team customers is $9.99 for a single image; $29.99 per month for 10 images monthly (with rollover of unused images); and $199 per month for 750 images monthly. Separate pricing is available for Adobe Stock customers who are not Creative Cloud members.